


Bloodletting

by BlueEyedArcher



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 4
Genre: Ajay has killed more then the Goat, Ajay snaps, Attempted Murder, Blood Loss, Blood and Violence, Blow everything the fuck up, Execution, Insanity, Jalendu Temple, M/M, Malnourished, Mass Murder, Mental Breakdown, Rabi Ray Rana talks about Serial Killer Ajay, Rituals, Sabal to the rescue?, Sacrifice, Self-Harm, Self-Sacrifice, Sleep Deprivation, Starvation, Suicide Attempt, anemia, cleansing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-02 23:42:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14556135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueEyedArcher/pseuds/BlueEyedArcher
Summary: “An elephant doesn’t need two heads, Sabal.” Ajay spoke back slowly, his words were faint, a cold whisper as if it would shatter the reality around him if he was too loud in his utterance.Sabal kept his hands at his sides, palms out in a placating gesture. “So you mean to kill me then.” It wasn’t a question but a statement, yet Ajay shook his head as if the answer wasn’t that simple. Nothing was ever really simple in Kyrat.[ Sabal and Ajay end up facing off. Ajay's intentions are soaked in blood, trailing after the words of the Rebel. He carried out the blood cleansing but will it ever be enough? ]





	Bloodletting

**Author's Note:**

> I finished the game for the third time, went to Jalendu afterwards since I followed Sabal's route and decided to kill him after the cleansing. Something one of the guards said as I was fighting Sabal stuck in my head and lead to this little piece. The phrase ran along the lines of "We're not doing this to hurt you but you're not yourself, brother."
> 
> Please leave a comment down below of what you think about the piece. This was really fun to write once it was stuck in my head.

It came without warning, or maybe there was one, but nobody cared to pay attention enough to see the signs until long after the carnage was laid out before them. It wasn’t long after Jalendu Temple, where Sabal displayed his new presence before those who would defile Kyrat. Ajay had come to the temple to see him only to walk up to the cleansing as men and women had their throats slit. All of which were loyalists to Amita, but they were people nonetheless. People who stood by the Golden Path, now dying at their hands. Sabal gave him an ultimatum, a threat to keep him in his place. Looking back now, he realized that may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. The rapidly fading light in the younger man’s eyes had blinked out entirely that day, succumbing to something darker, more dead then Sabal had ever seen in any man’s gaze. He shoved him towards the Tarun Matara, pushing him up the steps as they finished their duty, cutting the throats of six more before his blood lust was sated.

 

By the time he turned to see where Ajay had gone off to, hoping to speak with him about his new position as Sabal’s second, the man was nowhere to be found. A guard mentioned that he had left on a small boat he had arrived in, vanishing on the coastline with the others who were patrolling the lake. He sighed, allowing the younger man some time to get used to the new order of things. Days passed by in silence, turning into weeks before the first of the reports were coming in. Clusters of Royal Army patrols had been taken out but so had the groups of Golden Path that were intercepting them. Their vehicles completely destroyed, burned to just the husks of the framework, bits scattered across the ground. In some instances, they were nothing but debris littering the landscape with the scent of gunpowder on the air. The charred markings of a bomb distorting the metal work around the exterior.

 

Sabal assumed it was Amita’s loyalists or additional Royal army soldiers doing the damage but the same debris evidence was appearing at locations of Royal Army shelters and cargo trucks. Even cells of Amita’s loyalists had been hit. Then there were the bodies being found around outposts. Throats slit or bullets put through their skulls with practiced ease. Skilled hands doing the work from a distance with silenced weapons so as not to alert the guards. Nothing else had been tampered with, the bodies were tucked away, out of sight so they wouldn’t be discovered unless animals dragged them out of the smell of rot set in from the heat of the Kyrati summer sun. Some of the bodies were floating up in the lakes and rivers, taken down from the patrolling boats that rode up and down the coast. The boats themselves parked on the sides or left adrift where they had been stopped.

 

Then there were the murmurs, the sightings of a familiar figure darting through shadows. The bodies appearing left and right in caves and shrines, some in mine shafts or abandoned buildings. All neatly taken by a blade, ambushed or surprised by the attack. Anyone was fair game to these deaths but they were particularly fixed on soldiers of any kind. No matter their uniforms or allegiances. Sabal’s suspicions were noted but discreet at the familiar handiwork of the incidences. The reports coming in even had rounded suggestions by his subordinates. Of course they knew what it looked like when the Son of Mohan finished a job, they had cleaned out the outposts after he left bodies across the landscape. Sabal did his best to quiet these suspicions or excuse them as Ajay having a reason for attacking and killing. He always had a reason.

 

It wasn’t until he was listening to one of the raving broadcasts from Rabi that things just kept clicking into place. The man unknowingly was going on good naturedly about Ajay’s skills as the Golden Path’s hitman and the perfect serial killer. Any other time he would have blown the broadcast off and changed the channel on the radio or at least silenced it, but the longer the man talked, the more in perspective everything started falling. He couldn’t deny it, even more so when moments later one of the belltowers nearby had crumbled under a massive explosion.

 

Golden Path units assigned to patrols the area had arrived quickly to inspect the disaster only to find half a dozen of their men dead, neatly dispatched like all the others and explosive residue surrounding the tower, the debris caught in a blaze. Sabal didn’t need to inspect the site of the incident now. _‘If it was really Ajay, had he been listening to Rabi’s broadcast? Had it upset him? Enough even to destroy an entire belltower over?_ Sabal despised the man on a daily basis but not enough to go blowing up the towers. Even for Ajay that was a bit excessive but then again, he hadn’t been himself lately.

 

Two more days went by and there was news that Ajay was fighting in the arena. He had entered willingly, placing money down on himself for a series of death matches. By the time the rebel leader reached Shanath, Ajay had already left, having won all of his matches. He took out all of his opponents strategically, ending the matches in record time. Even the tigers and wolves were no match for the son of Mohan.

 

Sabal was growing frustrated as he seemed to be one step behind the younger man. He gave his map a quiet glance, looking over the growing stack of reports before something crossed his mind. He picked up the map and a pen, marking X’s at the report sites, rounding off the dates that they were discovered. After the first dozen or so, there was a pattern. All of these incidences were trailing across Kyrat. Ajay wasn’t going out of his way for these mishaps. It appeared he was just passing through the areas when these would occur, just like his normal work would. Only now, the trail of bodies was an unsettling sign to Sabal.

 

They had figured the Goat murderer had fifty victims in his times, spread over a long period even before Ajay appeared in Kyrat. Just in the last two weeks, Ajay alone had killed over a hundred people, many of them in patrol units. He didn’t know the reasoning behind it, but he needed to find out. His eyes glanced over the map once more, figuring where Ajay was heading at least. He had a very obvious trail started already and it was heading towards King’s Bridge.

 

Ajay had worked his way past King’s Bridge without being noticed by the soldiers occupying the post. By the time Sabal reached there, he had thought he may have cut him off or mistaken Ajay’s route. It wasn’t until an incoming vehicle brought news that one of the river patrols on the other side of the bridge was found dead on the banks with their boat lit ablaze. Sabal gathered a handful of Golden Path members and piled into a pick up, heading in the direction of the smoke. There was a second patrol boat burning on the water near Jalendu, gaining Sabal’s immediate attention. “He’s going to the Temple.” Sabal blurted, his mind jumping back to the belltower Ajay leveled all because of Rabi’s announcement. He wouldn’t put it past Ajay to destroy Jalendu as well.

 

He sent out an order to have every Golden Path unit in the area rendezvous to the temple to protect it. Other units were set up to patrol the roads surrounding, keeping an eye out for any trouble or signs of the younger man’s presence. He took a boat across with several soldiers, a handful more followed in other boats they had procured as well. They arrived to find the temple was relatively quiet, no signs of Ajay’s presence. They searched the lower levels and the upper floors, finding no hints that the temple had been tampered with. Sabal lingered on the steps, staring up at the massive tribute to their gods, the symbol of everything he stood for, releasing a deep sigh of relief. When his gaze lowered, he found his green hues meeting the cold dead eyes of his counterpart. Ajay had walked right up to him, easily slipping past the guards that patrolled the perimeter like a ghost in the wind. His clothing was soaked in blood, ripped and burned in places. He still had fresh blood spatter on his face and in his hair, a dark mess of grime and congealed clumps tousled throughout. His khukri hung from his fingertips, a lazy roll of his wrist showed his anxiety to use it.

 

“Sabal.” His voice was foreign to Sabal’s ears. A low tone that was void of any other emotion. Just as dead and sickly as his gaze, the pallor of his skin and the shakiness of his body was accented with the dark markings under his eyes. He was exhausted, looking as if he hadn’t felt a wink of rest since killing Pagan. He wondered if he had even eaten since then with the jittery weakness that quaked through him with subtle tremors.

 

“Brother, why are you doing this?” Sabal stayed firm in his stance, his hands were free, making no move to draw his gun or even alert the guards to the danger of the other’s presence. His gaze was fixed on Ajay’s, watching his lips twitch up into a twisted smile, a scoff left his lips followed by a deeper laugh that faded far too quickly. It left a disgusting unsettling feeling in his stomach, twisting up with just how wrong Ajay was acting right now. Something was seriously wrong, so much so, everything about him was unnatural. The way he moved, stepping towards him with another lazy flick of his wrist, the blood dripping to the stonework below from the tip of his khukri.

 

“An elephant doesn’t need two heads, Sabal.” Ajay spoke back slowly, his words were faint, a cold whisper as if it would shatter the reality around him if he was too loud in his utterance.

 

Sabal kept his hands at his sides, palms out in a placating gesture. “So you mean to kill me then.” It wasn’t a question but a statement, yet Ajay shook his head as if the answer wasn’t that simple. Nothing was ever really simple in Kyrat.

 

“No, no no. You don’t- You JUST don’t _get it_ !” His voice stressed the words in an odd fashion, pressuring them with sharp adjustments in volume that caught a nearby guard’s attention. Sabal watched as they all turned, one by one to focus their rifles at Ajay’s back. Sabal’s gaze flickered up, his fingers twitching in a subtle motion to hold their fire. The men nodded their understanding but were trained on the younger man. “You- _you_ never understood the truth. You didn’t have to pull the trigger EVER!” He blurted out, his shoulders hunching up as his features twisted into rage, a cold anger that sliced at Sabal just as well as Ajay’s khukri, driving something deep inside him to flinch and coil up as if afflicted with real pain.

 

“Then tell me what I don’t understand, brothe-”

 

“STOP CALLING ME THAT!” Ajay snapped, his grip in the khukri tightening, the leather of his gloves creaking against the taut pull, the seams fraying from wear and tear. He flicked the blade again, measuring idle thoughts to attack Sabal but holding back. The older man stifled the flinch and the fear inside him, smothering it to remain calm and collected. This was not the time or place to get wound up.

 

“Ajay.” Sabal tested the waters with his name, pronouncing it the american way the younger always did. It tasted foul on his tongue but seemed to stir something inside his lifeless eyes. It was brief, a flicker of recognition but it was quickly swallowed back up by the cold darkness that hung over him like a storm cloud. “Why don’t we head back to Banapur and talk about this? Or maybe go back to the homestead? Whichever you’re most comfortable with.”

 

“No!” He blurted sharply, huffing out a great breath as if he was struggling to keep a level head. His shoulders rising and falling much quicker, the khukri gripped tighter, bobbing in sharp nervous ticks. “You’ll never understand.” He murmured before his voice picked back up. “You wanted to cleanse Kyrat in blood, right Sabal? Was that enough fucking blood for you? Huh? Enough bodies left along the roads? Or would you like more?” He raised his arm to the rebel leader, dragging the khukri across his inner forearm, mimicking the same as Noore before she threw herself to the animals in the arena. Ajay didn’t have tigers and bears to rip him apart but he wasn’t stupid. He knew there were at least a dozen sights aimed on him this very moment. He could hear the soldiers moving in at his back, their feet working through the brush and grassy terrain. He knew what he was getting himself into and honestly, he didn’t care anymore.

 

He let the khukri bite into his skin, watched the warmth of his blood well up and pool onto the ground at his feet. “Is this enough fucking blood, Sabal?” He dragged it down again, higher up this time. His teeth clenched tightly as he offered more. Large gaping lacerations laying his skin open but it wasn’t the pain that got to him. It was the urge to do more. To keep drive that blade across his own flesh until there wasn’t a drop left in his own body.

 

“Ajay!” Sabal blurted out, taking the first steps towards the younger man to stop him. “Don’t do that! You’re not well. Let me help you.” Sabal pleaded as he closed the space between them, one hand reaching out for the younger man’s arm but Ajay cut him off, quite literally. He lashed out at Sabal, the khukri cutting open Sabal’s front and leaving a long shallow cut across the front of his chest. Ajay growled out in warning, forcing Sabal to stumble back. His fingers pressed against the fresh wound, wincing at the stinging pain but he quickly ignored it and turned his attention back to the younger man. He made certain his men did not engage Ajay. He knew something was terribly wrong with the man. “Ajay, please.” He begged, moving slower this time, his green orbs flickering with worry towards the steadily trickling blood from the man’s arm. His worry increased as the man seemed even more unsteady on his feet.

 

“Shut up. Shut up. SHUT THE FUCK UP!” He snapped and snarled, lunging at him again with the khukri, but his motion was sloppy, he swung too wide and judged the distance wrong. He stumbled forward with the growing dizziness, but he was determined to meet his mark. He corrected himself, as Sabal intercepted the khukri, catching his wrist but not able to stop Ajay as he slammed his shoulder into Sabal’s sternum. The force knocked them both to the ground, forcing the air out of the older man’s lungs as Ajay ended up on top of him. Sabal scrambled to keep his khukri away from his body while maintaining a close enough distance to Ajay as he drew in the first massive gulps of air to refill his lungs. Each breath caused sharp pin pricks in his rib cage, making him wince at the pain, figuring something was at least cracked.

 

“Why won’t you draw your weapon? Fucking fight back you coward!” Ajay barked out, straddling Sabal’s waist as they were eye to eye. Sabal made no move to arm himself, instead focusing on keeping control of Ajay’s weapon with a tight grip. The man didn’t have much strength left, the blade was held clumsily in his fingers, with a little more force. The older man could probably pull it free of his grasp but that wouldn’t soothe Ajay’s upset but give him another reason to instigate. “Or maybe I should just cut my own throat like those other people.” Ajay’s voice dropped low, a sluggish tint weaving through his words. He was starting to have trouble speaking without slurring. The dead look in his eyes was becoming more glossy and distant. Sabal could feel the younger man’s weight settling against his body, the way he would correct it after a few heart beats only to start sagging down again.

 

“Is that what you want, Ajay? For me to kill you?” Sabal finally spoke, his free hand rising to cup the side of the man’s face. He was so weary and pale, the weakness was alarming as his head lolled into Sabal’s hand, the weight increasing as his eyes fluttered shut before opening again, widening before they started to fall closed again.

 

“ _Sabal…_ ” It came much softer this time, broken as a hoarse whisper. His eyes fluttered shut again, hot tears streaming down his face, leaving trails in the dirt and grime on his cheeks, dropping down to the rebel’s neck. “ _I can’t live like this anymore. Please.”_ His lips parted with a shuddering sob, his fingers relinquishing the khukri to the rebel’s grasp but he didn’t use it. A flick of the wrist had it tossed across the gravel path, clinking against the rocky terrain. His arm moved around to Ajay’s other shoulder, fingers patting his back in slow careful motions, hushing him softly to soothe him as Ajay sank against his chest. His head rested on the rebel’s shoulder as he shuddered. The blood pooling between them from his arm, his fingers no longer moving on their own, the pain became a numbness that soon became a cold sensation settling in the limb, hanging uselessly at his side.

 

The soldiers closed in on the two when all seemed clear, grappling at Ajay’s shoulders to pull him off of the leader, guns aimed at the younger man but he had already succumbed to his exhaustion and blood loss. He was a rag doll on the ground, sliding over into a heap, lifeless and pitiful. It was hard to say if he was even still breathing with just a glance. He shared the same expression as their long dead, the ashen complexion and taut features. The sunken hollow of the eyes. One of the men pushed against his side cautiously with their shoe, gaining a sharp snap from Sabal in their native tongue. The men were startled, standing at attention as he was helped up to his feet. One of the soldiers started to fuss at the blood on his chest but Sabal swatted the worried hands away. “Take him back to King’s Bridge. Make sure a doctor sees to his injuries.”

 

It was unlikely that Ajay would recover from this but if anyone could do it, Sabal was certain it would be the Son of Mohan. The very same that escaped the inescapable Durgesh Prison and lived to tell about it. Who fought in the Arena against all odds, making it through five death match rounds with nothing but a knife and the skin on his back. Ajay was renown for being a survivor and a fighter. Rather he wanted to live or not, was another thing but Kyra knows, Ajay will make it through this. Something Sabal wasn’t certain was a good thing at this point.


End file.
